The field of the invention relates generally to an electrical busway, and, more particularly, to a variable length busway joint with forked busbars joining electrical busway sections.
Elongated rectangular flat conductive busbar members are conventionally insulatively arranged within electrical busway sections for transporting multi-phase high current electric power through industrial, commercial, and/or residential establishments. Successive elongated busway sections are electrically connected or interlocked together in end-to-end relation to provide electrical continuity between a power source and a power consuming load.
When longitudinally aligned busway sections are electrically interconnected in a conventional installation, a self-contained busway joint is typically employed. To preserve the thermal properties of the individual busway sections, the busway joint is conventionally constructed with electrically conductive splice plates and interleaving insulative plates fixedly held together by electrically insulated bolts.
Busway sections are generally manufactured and distributed in the form of pre-manufactured fixed-length sections, so that a number of such electrical busway joints are used to install an extended length busway run in an industrial facility. A busway joint enables two fixed-length busway sections to electrically connect at a distance different than the fixed length of the busway sections.
In many cases, the fixed-length sections do not match the specific length required for a given installation. As a result, custom length busway joints may be manufactured, adding significant cost and time to the installation. For example, installers typically order non-standard or custom length busway sections or joints to complete an installation. The custom length busway sections typically are manufactured to a specified length and the installer has to wait until it is delivered to finish installation of the busway run.
It would be desirable to provide a busway joint or busway section having an adjustable length to cooperate with adjacent longitudinally aligned busway sections to eliminate the need for custom length busway sections. Additionally it would be desirable to provide an adjustable length busway joint that permits replacement of a single busway section in a run without the need to remove other abutting busway sections from the end-to-end relationship. It would also be desirable to provide a longitudinally adjustable busway joint.